Jat

Jat, traditionally rural caste of northern India and Pakistan. In the early 21st century the Jats constituted about one-fourth of the populations of Punjab and Haryana; nearly 10 percent of the population of Balochistan, Rajasthan, and Delhi; and from 2 to 5 percent of the populations of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Uttar Pradesh. The Jats of Pakistan are mainly Muslim by faith. The Jats of India are mostly divided into two large castes of about equal strength: one Sikh, concentrated in Punjab, the other Hindu.

The Muslim Jats in the western regions are organized in hundreds of groups tracing their descent through paternal lines; they are mostly camel herders or labourers. Those of India and of the Punjabi areas of Pakistan are more often landowners. Numerically, Jats form the largest percentage of the Sikh community and therefore vie for leadership of the faith with urban Khatris, the group to which all 10 Gurus (spiritual leaders of Sikhism) belonged. Some scholars attribute Sikh military tradition largely to its Jat heritage.

The Jats first emerged politically in the 17th century and afterward, having military kingdoms such as Mursan in Uttar Pradesh, Bharatpur in Rajasthan, and Patiala in Punjab. Their sense of group solidarity, pride, and self-sufficiency have been historically significant in many ways. During the rule of the MughalemperorAurangzeb (late 17th century), for example, Jat leaders captained uprisings in the region of Mathura. A Jat kingdom established at nearby Bharatpur in the 18th century became a principal rival for declining Mughal power, its rulers apparently seeing themselves as defenders of Hindu ways against the Muslim Mughals.

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in India

...the Rajputs, the Marathas, and the Jats. However, this policy was hampered by divisiveness between the vizier and the emperor, as the groups tended to ally themselves with one or the other. The Jats had once again started plundering the royal highway between Agra and Delhi; however, while Farrukh-Siyar deputed Raja Jai Singh to lead a punitive campaign against them, the vizier negotiated a...

Soon, however, regional disturbances again rocked the empire. The Jat peasantry of Mathura rebelled in 1669; the tribal Pathans plundered the northwestern border districts and caravan routes, declaring war on Aurangzeb in 1667 and again in 1672; a rising occurred among the Satnami sect in Narnaul in 1672; and the Sikhs in the Punjab revolted under their Guru Tegh Bahadur, who was brutally put...

More than 60 percent of Sikhs belong to the Jat caste, which is a rural caste. The Khatri and Arora castes, both mercantile castes, form a very small minority, though they are influential within the Sikh community. Other castes represented among the Sikhs, in addition to the distinctive Sikh caste of Ramgarhias (artisans), are the Ahluwalias (formerly Kalals [brewers] who have raised their...